the kiss
by madis hartte
Summary: "A kiss seals two souls for a moment in time." -Levende Waters. How many kisses will it take for you to realize you love me?
1. One

"_When he kisses you he isn't doing anything else. You're his whole universe . . . and the moment is eternal because he doesn't have any plans and isn't going anywhere. Just kissing you . . . it's overwhelming." __~Anon_

* * *

><p>He's leaning agains<em>t<em> the bars of her home, and thunder laughs at them both.

The first thing that Stormcage had impressed upon him had been the absolute stillness. It was stillness separate from noise or people. The floor gleamed, slick and damp like the inside of a mouth, and the overhead lights shone wetly down onto the floor. Concrete walls painted beige and concrete floors painted a stale blue-yellow from the lights, and the ventilation shafts running up above all over the ceiling, humming and pitching away as they carried air through to the rest of the prison.

"You could come with us." He's trying and he's failing to not look into her room. River's room. Grey industrial shelves took up most of the wall space, with books and other assorted ends crammed onto whatever available surface. No sink, no toilet, no shower; really no bathroom at all. The bed is white, so spotless a white in that damp and dreary place, and he looks at it and gets a funny feeling in the back of his stomach, like butterflies trying to die.

A Time Lord is blessed and cursed with the ability to think of a multiplicity of things, all at once. It's a bit like a computer screen; having one main page that is being previewed, but having dozens of other pages of odds and ends tucked behind. It's like a computer, but not really like a computer at all, since a Time Lord is able to think of all those tucked away pages at once, so the computer's a bit of a rubbish analogy, forget the computer.

So while he's thinking about the odds and ends on River's shelves—where in the _world_ had she gotten the ingredients to make a hyper vodka, and more disturbingly _why?—_and about how Amy and Rory were alright now, but there had been the whole baby thing that he really isn't quite sure about, he'll need to ask her about that, and those Silence—worrying creatures, but he'll have to deal with them later, because there was the whole Amy pregnancy thing to work out, and the little girl—he's also looking at River's bed, and he's looking at her bed and noticing how the edges of the sheet are tucked crisply underneath the edge of the mattress, how everything about the bed was neat and tidied away like an army platoon is neat and tidied away in rows of column green. He's looking at her bed, and he can't help but think that it's only big enough for one person, and it doesn't look like it's been slept in for a long while.

Then he has to wonder where River went to inside of the TARDIS, after she'd taken a fall into the pool, how she'd gotten the change of clothes, how she'd dried her hair, because he certainly hadn't seen her lurking anywhere about the TARDIS. She had been nowhere at all. Not that he'd, y'know, looked for her or anything.

Had the TARDIs given her a room, and if she had, why had he not been so informed and are River's bed sheets in the TARDIS as neat as they are here? The stark crispness of them here is slightly depressing.

River smiles at him, and he knows what she's going to say before she says it. The smile says it all. "I escape often enough, thank you." And then she adds, almost with a sigh, "And I have a promise to live up to." Gently, so gently, she straightens his bow tie. She adds, "You'll understand soon enough," and his eyebrows shoot up. A promise to him, he thinks, and then uneasily wonders what sort of promise he'd made, if it makes her look at him like that. As if he's the best thing in the world ever.

"Okay," he says, because he doesn't—he doesn't—oh, he's not sure why he gives in so easily, but that look on her face when he'd yelled at her earlier, all those months ago—

Well. He might not trust her, but he thinks he sort of _likes_ her, just a little bit. After he'd gotten over his initial irritation that they were _lying_ to him—River didn't really count, she lied all the time, he'd come to expect it from her, but _Amy_ and _Rory _ were lying to him. _Amy _and _Rory. _And there that woman was, standing there, implacable as ever. He knew that she would be the one most _responsible_ for this whole mess. So he showed her all his ugly words, the things he never allowed his real friends to see, and she hadn't said anything at all. She'd just stared at him, and she hadn't said _anything. _It would have been better, somehow, if she'd yelled back at him.

Instead she'd looked at him as if she understood and forgave everything, always and completely.

He isn't sure what he's done, to ensure such forgiveness from her, but quite frankly it scares him witless. This woman, with her metal gun and her dry wit and her hair: who did she think she was?

_You can tell my anything_, he wants to say, but he'd yelled at her, so he doesn't think she will. Not today.

"Up to you," he tells her. _I can wait._ He turns away from her, standing at the door of her home. He had shoved his hands deep into his pockets the moment she had stopped outside her door, so he didn't—well, he doesn't—doesn't—well, he isn't sure, but hands in pockets seem like a good idea and he keeps them in his pockets now. The rough cloth of his pants scratches the bare skin of his fingers.

That Time Lord brain of his does it's thing again, and suddenly all he can think about is how soft her hair is, _so soft,_ pressing against the back of his neck as they counted out the Silence. So soft, and her shoulders had been so small, pressed against his shoulders.

How can someone with such small shoulders be so, so strong?

And how did she get her hair to look like that? So bouncy and curly and _soft—_

Ahem. Yes. Well. Hands in pockets. Good idea.

"See you next time," he says. He's sort of resigned himself to the inevitability of a next time. He turns away from her towards the waiting TARDIS, hands in pockets. "Call me," he adds. Somewhere in the back of his brain where there's the number ten he's freaking out, because he's just told River Song to _call him_. Only his friends get to call him ever, and he isn't sure if River Song is his friend . . . but he's ninety-nine percent sure that she already has his number and the extra one percent doesn't count.

Huh. Look at that. They are friends. Who'd have guessed?

"What? That's it?" she exclaims to his retreating back. He turns back towards her. "What's the matter with you?" She's frowning at him, and his brain kind of goes into overdrive. What in the world is she talking about? He hadn't missed anything, he'd made sure to tell her to call him anytime; that was practically his Stamp of Approval, telling someone to call him, it means that he trusts her, well, sort of maybe trusts her, that he trusts her enough to trust her with his answering machine.

He decides to be glib, throwing his hands out to the sides in the universal gesture of "ha-ha, look at me, joking with you, ha-ha-ha." Maybe if he acts glib enough she'll tell him what he's forgetting to do, and then he can do it, and then he can leave, because her _hair—_

_Shut up about the hair already,_ he tells his brain, and aloud he tells River, "Have I forgotten something?" and she smiles at him. He's quite suddenly completely and utterly distracted by the way her nose crinkles when she smiles.

"Oh, shut up," she tells him, still smiling. And then her hand, cool at the back of his neck, halfway down the back of the collar on his shirt. She pulls him towards her, and then she does the simplest thing in the world, she kisses him, and

and

and

and

and her shoulders fit under his hands. Exactly. Precisely. Completely. He realizes that his mouth is slanting over hers, and it all fits, this body fits her body. Her small hand

rests

lightly over his cheek, and he shivers at it. Out of his peripheral vision he sees his hands rise up from her shoulders, two giant, clumsy birds wanting to make a nest out of her hair. For a moment his hand cups the corner of her jaw, catching on the softness of her skin. For a moment his skin skims air through her hair, and it spills gold onto the creases of his fingers. Somewhere the small bits of him are running around, arms flailing with panic and screaming bloody murder, but her mouth is cool and sweet and light under his and she is so, so light, like falling through the towers singing. Her lips move and his lips move and

and his mouth, over hers. Teeth and tongue and breath coupling together. Coupling together, and—and his brain catches up with his hands, because her arms slip around his waist and find the small of his back and ignite fire along his spine and into the rest of his body. His arms wheel back, flail a bit, and he has to clasp his hands behind his back, because they want to touch the small of her back too. And maybe her hair. No, scratch that, _definitely_, her hair.

His brain takes off to catch up with his mouth, which is still busy

kissing

kissing, kissing River. Then she does something with her mouth that makes even his brain just completely stop.

They let go at the same time.

His stomach feels light and swoopy, and the only thing he can seem to focus on is the way her hands had fit the small of his back and how it had felt so good. He really wouldn't mind doing it again, anytime. That is . . . new. This light, swoopy feeling is new, because all he wants to do is kiss her again. All he can concentrate on is the way she had tasted under his mouth.

"Right. Okay. Interesting." And his hand, all of its own accord, reaches out to touch her hair again; he turns it into a nervous tick, scratching his cheek.

"What's wrong?" she asks him. "You're acting like we've never done that before."

He sort of smiles at her a bit, to soften the sting of the blow, but the smile fades quickly. Even though all he wants to do is keep smiling forever and ever, because—

Well. Light and swoopy.

"We haven't."

"We haven't?"

He needs to escape that look in her eyes: that crushed, hopeless bird quivering look. The kind of look soldiers get after returning home: shell-shocked. Blindsided by the unexpected. So he does what he does best and begins to babble.

"Oh, look at the time." Check the watch, look busy and important, even though you are almost as shell-shocked as she is, because all you can think about now is snogging River right there senseless. "Must be off."

Kissing

River

"But it was nice. It was good." Wondrous, stupendous kissing. Superb. Sublime. Beautiful. Figuratively speaking, fireworks. Or dynamite. TNT. "It was unexpected .But you know what they say: 'There's a first time for everything.'"

Who even _says_ that? He never has, certainly not before this, and shut up, brain, shut up shut up _shut up! _

He's stumbling back towards the TARDIS, whirling back around to face her, talking talking talking, and he almost crashes into the TARDIS doors because he tries to walk through them before they're properly opened.

He can't seem to think straight, and he will do _anything_ to escape that look on her face.

Like he's just killed the thing she loves most.

_Anything_.

And as he finally manages to open the door and stumble through it and escapes, he does not hear her last words.

An epitaph on a grave-marker, with the daisies pushing up from the earth:

"And a last time."

If he had, he might have stayed.


	2. Two

_[T]hen I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down... and kissed him. And the world cracked open. ~Agnes de Mille_

* * *

><p>The first time doesn't count.<p>

She kisses to kill and doesn't stay and linger. She laughs at him as he collapses to the floor. She smiles at his pain, is satisfied with it. Gorged herself on her victory, and ground him into dust under her heel.

But the second time? Oh, that definitely, definitely counts.

He's lying there still, too still, and there's a look almost like peace on his face. Like he had seen something happy before he'd gone, or done something that he'd always wanted to do but never dared before. She doesn't understand, because all he'd done was whisper in her ear. All she'd done was laugh at him.

Why had he whispered tender sweet into her ear like that? She craves to hear his breath tickling her skin again. And that doesn't make any sense. She hates the Doctor. She hates hates _hates_ him.

(but he'd whispered in her ear—

She demands her mother to tell her. "Who's River Song?" Because she thinks she now knows. _That whisper fighting its way into her heart: such a brave little soldier._

And Amelia Pond turns and says _show me River Song._

It's really the simplest thing in the world, looking in a mirror. Looking glass houses all make sense when you know how to look for them. Melody's always been far, far too good with looking glass houses.

Of course she will be her. Of course. _Of course._)

Melody is River. He'd talked about River like she was something special, and she looks at him, lying there sleeping so quiet, too still. The Doctor was never still, always running.

Her mind empties, and all she can think is: _He asked for River Song to help him._

Somewhere behind her, Melody's mother is asking her a question, but that's not important. The whisper was the Doctor's secret. (He's entrusted her with his hearts; she almost realizes too late.)

It really is too easy, pulling the countless lives that-will-might-never-be to the fore. They clamor forward, all eager, because this is the Doctor. And she knows, in that instant, why the smart funny nice sarcastic ginger insane funny happy ones are all so eager to give themselves up for him.

Because he is himself. Simply. Precisely. And that is really all that matters.

"Just tell me," she whispers. "Is he worth it?"

_Yes,_ they all, all whisper. Unanimous.

"Yes!" Amelia says. "Yes, he is!"

_Mother, I wasn't asking you._

The regeneration spills gold from her, and she steps forward, and kneels down next to him. He looks young, like one of the young men in Leadworth, and she knows that if he had asked her out for coffee—had asked her out for anything, really—she would have said yes.

In a heartbeat she would have said yes.

In a heartbeat.

She slides her hands cool along his jaw, and her thumbs

brush

gently along his cheeks. So soft, and cool. Like music. The golden light spills over his eyes and mouth and hair and mouth and nose and mouth. He breathes, where it had all been so still before, and he looks at her.

"River. _No_. What are you doing?"

Closer, closer still, swimming in his eyes, looking at her looking at him. Coming closer. Her life pouring into his. And it's bliss, like a galaxy exploding.

"Hello sweetie."

And she kisses him because she wants to.

* * *

><p><em>(tbc)<em>

_Thank you, everybody, for your kind reviews. It's a bright spot in my day, like black-eyed susans in a flowerbed. ~madis_


	3. Two Again

_". . . I felt  
>Something melt inside me<br>That hurt in an exquisite way  
>All my longings, all my dreams and sweet anguish,<br>All the secrets that slept deep within me came awake,  
>Everything was transformed and enchanted<br>And made sense."_

_~Hermann Hesse_

* * *

><p>Her mouth slides over his, and she explodes into him. All of herself pouring through his mindheartsoul, a thousand, thousand synapses exploding all at once in a single brilliant star, pulling together, coalescing at her mouth on his. It's too much. His hands spill forward, his body going limp, and all he can concentrate on is her mouth, sliding over his. The one focal point in a thousand, thousand inconsistencies (because he can taste all of her she was giving up, all the amazing, amazing women she will now never be because of him. Amazing. Amazing.)<p>

If his mind had room to think about it at all, he would have noticed.

He would have noticed how her mouth snags against his, how it is dry, how it sparks and fizzles against his lips as the poison burns up through the energy of ten regenerations.

He would have noticed how the kiss is almost hesitant against his kiss, how it is just a mere press of lips, almost chaste in what it is trying to accomplish, combining two into one being. He would have noticed how her breathing slips past his lipsteethtongue and curls in his mouth.

He would have noticed how her fingers

trembled

at the corners of his jaw, the way they were hesitant and light, like moths.

But as it is, all he can notice

is

River-not-River. Melody.

Melody.

This is Melody kissing him. If her hello had been born out of tainted lips, her goodbye is soft and tender and rife with all those might-have-been possibilities.

_(even if he visited her parents for holidays and all she knew of him was the man in the funny blue box who always brought the best of Christmas presents, she still would have kissed him under starlight-moonlight, probably at university when he visits her for her, for her first, first time. even if she'd had red hair and was studying to be a nurse._

_even then)_

Coming together, like a heartbeat curled inside love's echo. Two heartbeats, each to each.

Always.

_(and her fingers, trembling on his skin, and her mouth, tender sweet in his)_


	4. One Again

_"When I saw you, I was afraid to meet you . . . When I met you, I was afraid to kiss you . . . When I kissed you, I was afraid to love you . . . Now that I love you, I'm afraid to lose you." ~ Anon_

* * *

><p>"You could come with us."<p>

For a moment she can't breathe, and she looks at him and wonders: is this when it all starts for him? He can barely look at her, but he's offering her access into the most tender, secret bits, the parts that only his friends are allowed to see. The TARDIS is impenetrable on the outside, but on the inside even the most accidental slip can end reality.

The Doctor guards the TARDIS's heart more jealously than any husband, and he's offering River a piece of it.

How young is he, really?

She isn't willing to take any chances, though. Not with something as important as them. So she just smiles at him and says, "I escape often enough, thank you."

She remembers the first time she'd escaped. It had been with him, and it hadn't taken her long to figure out that while it was _her_ wedding night it certainly wasn't _his_. Snogging him may have had something to do with discovering that little fact. The stars and the tree had still been beautiful, though, and she had come back to prison to find her husband waiting for her with a smile.

"Besides, I have a promise to live up to," she adds, reaching out to straighten the small crook in his bow tie.

_"River: take one end of this, wrap it around your hand, and hold it out to me." She takes the bow tie from him, too shaken by him yelling at her to do much else than obey._

_"What am I doing?" she wonders, and he tells her, "As you're told." They wrap and wrap the grey and silver bow tie round and round, she her right, he his left. It is a cool, smooth river under her hands, and its thin silk. _

_The Doctor's telling Dad to do something, say something. "I consent and gladly give." Why are those words so bone achingly familiar?_

_He turns to Amy, who's staring at them, a fixed, determined expression on her face. _Mother_, River thinks. At least one of them knows what's going on besides the Doctor. "I need you to say it too," he tells her. The look on his face is slightly pleading and slightly scared. He can't quite seem to look River in the eye when he adds, "Mother of the bride."_

_Oh. _

Oh. _Bride. (She remembers, quite suddenly, being forced to attend the wedding of herself and the Raggedy Doctor out in the backyard when they were all eight, because Mels'd simply _refused_ to marry Rory. Breathless with laughter, because Rory was officiating the ceremony instead and couldn't get a single word right, she pressed the Play-doh lips of the Doctor to hers. "There now!" she declared, pulling back with a smack. She felt a vicious little thrill running through her middle: Mum and Dad were here and Anna was not and Mels had married him. Hah. "We're married," she declared triumphantly, and Amy threw crumbled bits of saltines because Amy's mum wouldn't let them use the rice. And then a giant eye had attacked the wedding party . . .)_

_A bride. He really wants to marry her? Really and truly? She looks at him, dizzy. His gaze is fixed on hers now, and all of that panic has been replaced by a determination that thrills right through her. _

_("When I was little I wanted to marry you."_

_"Good idea. Let's get married. You stay alive and I'll marry you. Deal? Deal."_

Deal_, she remembers thinking fuzzily, and she made some quip about parents and pennies before everything was lost in the golden haze of regeneration and new bodies and programming.)_

_"Now River, I'm about to whisper something in your ear and you have to remember it very carefully and tell **no one** what I said." And then his voice, crackling dry and low against her skin as he leans forward to whisper four little words. And they aren't _River, I love you.

But none of that has happened for him yet. Now, here, he's looking at her, _so young,_ and he has that funny little wrinkle between his eyebrows that he gets when he's confused about something. To smooth out that wrinkle, she adds, "You'll understand soon enough." The wrinkle shoots up the other way as he raises his eyebrows at her.

"Okay. Up to you," he tells her, and that just isn't fair.

If it were up to her he would know every language of her heart. Every single one.

No secrets.

No spoilers.

He's turning away from her, blabbing on about something stupid like _calling him_ if she ever needs to, and all she can hear is what he's _not_ saying. The Doctor may be young, but he is smart. _Call me, because I won't be calling you. I won't **know** to call you. _It's all beginning and ending here.

And she's ending, cracking into a thousand little pieces, because the one thing that he's always, always done—he's not—he's just _walking away. _Just like that.

_Please. Oh please no. Not yet. _

"What?" she blurts out. "That's it? What's the matter with you?"

_Please oh please oh please no._

He turns back towards her, a smug grin on his face. She could almost weep with relief as he teases, "Have I forgotten something?"

No. He is just being the biggest flirt. He's horrible at it, bless, but he does try so.

"Oh shut up," she tells him. Relief. Relief. _Relief. _Her grin is so wide as to split open the sky. She pulls him forward and presses her smile to his lips.

And it's all wrong. It's right, though, because it's always right, kissing the Doctor. The taste of his mouth, sliding cool over her teeth, and the soft wet press of the kiss itself, and the way they fit together. They've always fit together. The rough weave of his tweed rubs her arms as she slides her hands around his waist, and he's not touching her, not really. Not in all those little touches that a husband and wife know to commune their bodies dancing to the salsa beat of hearts and souls.

Yes. It's a right, sure thing, kissing the Doctor. But it's all wrong. She can feel it, in the way he trembles with the not touching. Even still, they let go at the same time.

"Right. Okay. Interesting," and he scratches his cheek.

Interesting? _Interesting? _She snogs him, and all he has to say is _interesting?_ If her heart wasn't breaking she'd be insulted.

"What's wrong? You're acting like we've never done that before."

"We haven't."

And just like that, she knows: her husband is lost to her forever. It's something like a death, only worse, because he's _right there_. Only he's not.

He's not.

He's not.

"We haven't?" she echoes, voice stretched taut and thin and incredulous.

"_Oh_, look at the time. Must be off." His watch has never worked. He just wears it for because. "But it was nice. It was good. Unexpected . . ." She can only stand there as he leaves, as he tears down the colorful party streamers and pops all the balloons.

Celebration over.

". . . but you know what they say: 'There's a first time for everything.'" And in his haste to leave her he runs into the door. He manages to get it open eventually, and looks at her one last time, giving a half hearted grin.

Then he's gone.

River crumbles. Her grip on the bars of her cell is the only thing that keeps her standing. "And a last time," she tells the empty air, and the time line of her life stretches before her, cold and empty and without any love from the Doctor in it at all. She can see it, with that innate Time Lord bit of her brain. The wolf lurking just out of the corner of your eye; he digs up the bones of their marriage and gobbles them right up.

Because she will never be able to tell the Doctor the language of her heart again. Not ever.

Not ever.

_(I)_

_love_

_[you.]_

* * *

><p><strong>to be concluded. ~madis<strong>


	5. Three

_"Still my river—and your river_  
><em>still my hand—and your hand<em>  
><em>will never join, or not until<em>  
><em>one dawn catches up another dawning."<em>

_~Marina Tsvetaeva (tr. Elaine Feinstein), from "Poems for Blok: 5_

* * *

><p>She and Margary part ways on the street corner, promising to meet for lunch on Saturday, and she heads on alone. It's a bit of a bizarre life now, living normal, teaching archaeology at the university, and she isn't sure that she'll ever get used to it. Ah well—she's still hiring out as a free-lance archaeologist on the side, and someone had already contacted her just yesterday, a soft-faced, flint-eyed businessman named Lux.<p>

She still isn't sure whether she'll take the job, but a library with four thousand and twenty-two vanished people?

Sounds exciting.

It's a calm night. The lights from the university gather up behind her, rising high over the city as she makes her way down towards home. Fog curls around the edges of the buildings and street-lamps; the designers of the bio-dome had tried to replicate Earth as much as possible. So the fake sky is blue, and the grass is green, but at night there are more stars than anywhere on Earth, now with its city-countries and smoke stacks rising up into the sky. Colonizing the galaxy takes sacrifice, and Earth had borne the brunt of that sacrifice. (Although the history books will never tell.)

Once she reaches the park wedged in the middle of the university complex, she slips off her heels one by one, catching the back straps with her fingers to dangle them in her hand.

She walks barefoot through the grass.

There are plenty of students out tonight, carousing under the light of too many stars. A few of them say hello to their professor, but most are too entwined with each other to notice. So she is free to tilt her head back, look past the trees to the sky. Yes: too many stars for Earth, but just enough for the moon. Not even the bio-dome can really block them out. She is reminded of that first night out with the Doctor, after everyone had finally left her alone, after she had lied so often she almost believed the lies herself.

_Yes, I killed him, but I had no choice._

_I was only doing what I was programmed to do._

_I loved him._

(That last one was only a lie because it was in the past tense, but they weren't to know that.)

And never in her wildest dreams had she expected him to come for her. Never. Twelve thousand consecutive life sentences, one night after another, and the shock thrilling through her heart when she'd heard the TARDIS—that was real, so real.

No. She wasn't expecting him at all, but he came anyway.

How quintessential of him. How beautifully quintessential. He'd taken her to see the giant silver tree, and the golden leaves bigger than houses, and all the myriad of stars.

What a night that was.

The grass is silver cold under her feet. Across the bridge, over the pond with the ducks. Home is on the other side.

It's a modest affair, out of the way, right on the edge of the park. Someplace where the university can keep an eye on her, someplace where she isn't actually in the city proper. She may be a professor now, but once upon a time there was a woman who killed a doctor.

* * *

><p>She places her key in the lock of her front door. "Hi, honey," he says. His voice is low, a husked whisper, falling across the distance the porch creates between them. "I'm home."<p>

Of course she'd known he was there; she's a highly trained assassin raised to kill him, after all. No, he doesn't surprise her.

But him actually being_ here_, at her_ door_, now that does.

She turns. He's leaning against the porch railing, smirking at her, top hat tipped precariously jaunty on top of his head. "And what sort of time do you call this?" she teases back, allowing a smile to form. Because if he's calling her honey, even in jest, that means at least he's done the Pandorica. Specific dates on where they both are in each other's time stream is always trickier than the bigger picture, the larger landmarks. Pandorica. Wedding. Demon's Run. Berlin. Trenzalore. Byzantium. Asgard. The signposts that mark their life.

He smiles back at her, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes, not really. Fear grips her, swift and sudden, and she takes a half step toward him, her hearts slamming double-beat in her chest. "Sweetie? Is everything alright? A-Amy and Rory—they're okay?"

"No, no, Amy and Rory are alright. They're good." And still he just _stares_ at her. She takes another step forward, gaze scanning his face. He's tired, she can see that right off; there're dark circles under his eyes, and his face is lined with worry, for all the new suit. How many weeks has he gone without sleep?

"Sweetie?" she asks again, voice rising in concern. "What's the matter? When are you? Where are Amy and Rory?"

He doesn't say anything for a moment. His face is shadowed by the brim of his hat. Just as she is getting ready to march over to him and _demand_ what's going on, timelines be damned, he crosses the porch in two long strides, grabs her by the shoulders, pulling her to him, and he kisses her.

For a moment she fights him, because—because how _old_ is he? And then it simply doesn't matter anymore, because the Doctor is crying. The Doctor. Crying. The salt from his tears stains the kiss. She's crying too.

"I love you," he tells her between kisses. "I love you. I love you."

She's laughing and sobbing into his mouth. "I love you too," she tells him. They pull away from one another for a moment; his arms are around her waist, his thumbs lightly circling the small of her back.

"You're crying," she says, cupping his face in her hands, brushing the tears from his cheeks. "Why are you crying?"

"I always cry at beautiful things," he says. "I've learned to appreciate them whenever I can." Then his mouth slants over hers again, tasting the color of her lipstick; she buries her hands into his hair, and she doesn't care how old or how young he is, because this is—

because he's hers. Always, always hers.

Always.

He's holding her so wonderfully tightly. "When—When are we for you? When?" she gasps against his mouth, because she has to be sure.

He pulls back just enough to look her in the eyes. "Happy birthday, wife. I was thinking, for your birthday present—how would you like to hear towers sing, eh?"

"It's you," she whispers, her smile so wide as to split open the stars. "It's you."

Her husband.

"It's me," he agrees, and he's smiling too, through his tears.

And River has never been happier.

* * *

><p><em><strong>end.<strong>_


End file.
